Pearl Gluck

A filmmaker with a mix of professional and teaching experience, Pearl Gluck joined the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications faculty in 2014. Gluck teaches screenwriting, directing, producing and through her courses and her films she explores themes such as autobiographical film and representations of gender, class, and faith in cinema.

Gluck is currently in post-production on her short film, Castles in the Sky, starring Lynn Cohen. Her feature film, The Turn Out (2018), which blends documentary and fiction storytelling to address the underreported issues of domestic sex trafficking at truck stops, is currently screening at film festivals and won Best Debut Feature at the Female Eye Film Festival in Toronto, Canada, as well as the American Tracks Music Award for the film's title song, Heaven Spelled Backwards. She was awarded a 2000 Sundance Producer's Lab fellowship and a 2001 Sundance Festival mentorship for Divan (2004), her first documentary film. Her short film, Summer (2018), playing the festival circuit, won Best Short film through Film Movement and the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. Divan (2004) was broadcast on the Sundance Channel, theatrically premiered at the Film Forum in New York and played at festivals around the world.

Her short film, Where Is Joel Baum (2012), starring Lynn Cohen won various awards at festivals including Best Film at The Female Eye film festival and Best Actor for Luzer Twersky at the Starz Denver Film Festival. In July 2011, she was a contributing producer for WTIU, the Indiana PBS affiliate and reviewed the Midwest Best Biker Fest. She released Soundwalk: Williamburg in 2007 on Paris Premiere, and won an Audie Award for the project. Her first short film that she co-wrote, Goyta (2007) premiered at Cannes, and she co-directed and co-produced the award-winning short, Great Balls of Fire (2001) which screened at Transmediale, Oberhausen, European Media Arts Festival, Ocularis, the New York Video Festival at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and the DIG.IT Festival at the Walker Center for the Arts.

In 1996 she received a Fulbright grant to Hungary to collect Hasidic stories. Gluck has been interviewed about her work on NPR with Melissa Block, WBUR's The Connection with Chris Leiden in Boston and produced for WBAI. She has appeared in A Life Apart: Hasidism in America (1998; Directed and Produced by Oren Rudavsky and Menachem Daum). In 2016, along with Film/Video students and MFA Theater alum, Elle Jae Stewart, Gluck directed Junior, an award-winning film which looks at racially motivated police violence through one mother's eyes.

Gluck previously taught at Ohio University, Indiana University, Emory University and Rutgers University. She has taught courses on screenwriting, production, directing, film criticism, film studies and Jewish studies. She has also conducted independent studies for graduate and undergraduate students, and has advised thesis projects.

• Palinka Pictures
• Video-WPSU Interview

• Artistic director Pearl Gluck on this year’s Centre Film Festival
• Centre Film Festival returns for sixth year with 200 films, variety of styles
• Centre Film Festival returning for sixth year
• Centre Film Festival returns Oct. 30-Nov. 5 with ‘something for everyone’
• Penn State partners with Rowland Theatre for Centre Film Festival Nov. 8-10
• Sandi Klein's "Conversations with Creative Women" Podcast
• Conference features screenings of two films about police ethics
• PSU prof to show ‘The Turn Out’ at the Rowland
• Film sees human trafficking through eyes of truck driver
• Faculty member's short film set to debut in New York City
• Snapshot: Pearl Gluck
• Faculty film preview, panel discussion focus on sex trafficking and its victims
• Ethics panel to pose tough questions to incoming Schreyer Scholars
• Faculty member's film set for festival in Houston
• Gluck's film focuses on sex trafficking
• State Theatre to host film event
• Faculty filmmaker received grant to advance feature film
• NewFilmmakers Los Angeles reveals 8th annual Best of NFMLA Awards
• Centre Film Festival returns for second year, with dozens of selections to view from your home
• Centre Film Festival hits home screens
• Penn State professor, film director Pearl Gluck discusses career and award-winning film
• Centre Film Festival returns to share global stories, honor filmmakers
• Centre Film Festival adapts and grows to return for its third year
• Collegial, passionate faculty members drive Centre Film Festival

THE TURN OUT (2018 feature film) Teaser

SUMMER (2018 short film) Teaser

JUNIOR (2017 short film) Teaser

WHERE IS JOEL BAUM (2012 short film) Teaser

THE BOOGIE (2010 Producer on PBS/WTIU)

WILLIAMSBURG (2007 Soundwalk) Teaser

DIVAN (2004 feature documentary) Teaser